


Roses can sprout in the concrete streets

by Kaesteranya



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-18 22:38:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesteranya/pseuds/Kaesteranya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't not like her, but...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roses can sprout in the concrete streets

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for June 7, 2008.

To say that they went to school together wouldn’t exactly be right – it is more like they walk to Kokuyo Academy from the same starting point, and happen to cross through the same areas along the same streets. Kaki Chikusa and Joushima Ken far ahead, keeping perfect pace with each other. Chrome Dukuro far behind them, clutching a leather bag that’s nearly as tall as she is, booted feet hurrying down the pavement. Although the two boys carry themselves as though they weren’t aware that someone was following them, an observant outsider would notice the way they speed up just a notch at every crossing, in the hopes that the light would turn and they’d put more distance between them and the strange girl that their leader seems to be ridiculously fond of. Suffice to say, they are not all that successful.

 

Chrome is a year below them and a floor down in the building, but Ken and Chikusa cross her classroom sometimes, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, on the way out to cut class in favor of packing in a little time in the arcade: hers is the seat farthest away from the blackboard, in a corner tucked almost out of sight. Arts and crafts, so she is always working on something when they spot her. For all the stammering and fidgeting that she does in their presence, her fingers are deft and steady, ordering her own personal universe into sharp folds and colors of her choice.

 

On Tuesdays and Thursdays Chrome is out with her class at the swimming pool, but they have never seen her do anything but sit ankle-deep in the water with her back against the chain-link fence, cut off from her classmates even as she’s surrounded by their laughter, staring at some point on the horizon that only she seems to be able to see. The eyepatch is gone, but from where they are, Ken and Chikusa cannot see the gaping hole it conceals.

 

Because they skip the last period of mandatory service and general cleaning, they are always home before the general student populace in town – they snoop around once they enter their base, trying, in their own indirect way, to search for any trace of their leader, to see if he had been around, if he had left some sort of message. He may have told them that he would communicate through the girl when he needed to, but they don’t trust her, this soft spoken illusionist with a quiet dislike for pineapples. She has too much of Mukuro in her and none of the memories that they share with him.

 

Chrome returns early in the evening and just a little after they are done scouring the place to their satisfaction and finding nothing – she always comes around with an armful of convenience store goods and a mouth full of apologies. They take the food, ignore the words. She eventually retreats, withdrawing to the corner of the room in order to do her homework, or maybe fuss over the trident that she brings all over the place. By the time Chikusa and Ken finish whatever it is they are doing, it is almost midnight and she’s curled up like some mutated kitten, fast asleep. Ken grumbles about what an idiotic girl she is. Chikusa doesn’t bother wasting his energy and dumps a blanket on her instead. It gets chilly in their hiding place, and their leader was bound to be displeased if he was forced to possess a vessel weak with the common cold.

 

She tries to thank them the next day, when the traffic lights aren’t in their favor and the three of them are stuck at the same side of a pedestrian crossing, but the volume of Chikusa’s music player’s been cranked all the way up and Ken is too sleepy to care.


End file.
